5 guestfish - the libguestfs filesystem interactive shell
9 guestfish [--options] [commands]
11 guestfish -i libvirt-domain
13 guestfish -i disk-image(s)
17 =head2 From shell scripts
19 Create a new C</etc/motd> file in a guest:
24 mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /
25 write_file /etc/motd "Hello users" 0
28 List the LVs in a guest:
36 =head2 On the command line
38 List the LVM PVs in a guest image:
40 guestfish add disk.img : run : pvs
42 Remove C</boot/grub/menu.lst> (in reality not such a great idea):
44 guestfish --add disk.img \
45 --mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 \
46 --mount /dev/sda1:/boot \
47 rm /boot/grub/menu.lst
49 =head2 As an interactive shell
53 Welcome to guestfish, the libguestfs filesystem interactive shell for
54 editing virtual machine filesystems.
56 Type: 'help' for help with commands
57 'quit' to quit the shell
61 =head2 As a script interpreter
63 #!/usr/bin/guestfish -f
64 alloc /tmp/output.img 10M
66 sfdisk /dev/sda 0 0 0 ,
71 Guestfish is a shell and command-line tool for examining and modifying
72 virtual machine filesystems. It uses libguestfs and exposes all of
73 the functionality of the guestfs API, see L<guestfs(3)>.
81 Displays general help on options.
83 =item B<-h> | B<--cmd-help>
85 Lists all available guestfish commands.
87 =item B<-h cmd> | B<--cmd-help cmd>
89 Displays detailed help on a single command C<cmd>.
91 =item B<-a image> | B<--add image>
93 Add a block device or virtual machine image to the shell.
95 =item B<-f file> | B<--file file>
97 Read commands from C<file>. To write pure guestfish
100 #!/usr/bin/guestfish -f
102 =item B<-i> | B<--inspector>
104 Run virt-inspector on the named libvirt domain or list of disk
105 images. If virt-inspector is available and if it can identify
106 the domain or disk images, then partitions will be mounted
107 correctly at start-up.
109 Typical usage is either:
113 (for an inactive libvirt domain called I<myguest>), or:
115 guestfish --ro -i myguest
117 (for active domains, readonly), or specify the block device directly:
119 guestfish -i /dev/Guests/MyGuest
121 You cannot use I<-a> or I<-m> in conjunction with this option, and
122 options other than I<--ro> might not behave correctly.
124 See also: L<virt-inspector(1)>.
126 =item B<-m dev[:mountpoint]> | B<--mount dev[:mountpoint]>
128 Mount the named partition or logical volume on the given mountpoint.
130 If the mountpoint is omitted, it defaults to C</>.
132 You have to mount something on C</> before most commands will work.
134 If any C<-m> or C<--mount> options are given, the guest is
135 automatically launched.
137 =item B<-n> | B<--no-sync>
139 Disable autosync. This is enabled by default. See the discussion
140 of autosync in the L<guestfs(3)> manpage.
142 =item B<-r> | B<--ro>
144 This changes the C<-m> option so that mounts are done read-only
145 (see C<guestfs_mount_ro> in the L<guestfs(3)> manpage).
147 =item B<-v> | B<--verbose>
149 Enable very verbose messages. This is particularly useful if you find
152 =item B<-D> | B<--no-dest-paths>
154 Don't tab-complete paths on the guest filesystem. It is useful to be
155 able to hit the tab key to complete paths on the guest filesystem, but
156 this causes extra "hidden" guestfs calls to be made, so this option is
157 here to allow this feature to be disabled.
161 =head1 COMMANDS ON COMMAND LINE
163 Any additional (non-option) arguments are treated as commands to
166 Commands to execute should be separated by a colon (C<:>), where the
167 colon is a separate parameter. Thus:
169 guestfish cmd [args...] : cmd [args...] : cmd [args...] ...
171 If there are no additional arguments, then we enter a shell, either an
172 interactive shell with a prompt (if the input is a terminal) or a
173 non-interactive shell.
175 In either command line mode or non-interactive shell, the first
176 command that gives an error causes the whole shell to exit. In
177 interactive mode (with a prompt) if a command fails, you can continue
180 =head1 USING launch (OR run)
182 As with L<guestfs(3)>, you must first configure your guest by adding
183 disks, then launch it, then mount any disks you need, and finally
184 issue actions/commands. So the general order of the day is:
206 C<run> is a synonym for C<launch>. You must C<launch> (or C<run>)
207 your guest before mounting or performing any other commands.
209 The only exception is that if the C<-m> or C<--mount> option was
210 given, the guest is automatically run for you (simply because
211 guestfish can't mount the disks you asked for without doing this).
215 You can quote ordinary parameters using either single or double
218 add "file with a space.img"
224 A few commands require a list of strings to be passed. For these, use
225 a space-separated list, enclosed in quotes. For example:
227 vgcreate VG "/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1"
229 =head1 WILDCARDS AND GLOBBING
231 Neither guestfish nor the underlying guestfs API performs
232 wildcard expansion (globbing) by default. So for example the
233 following will not do what you expect:
237 Assuming you don't have a directory literally called C</home/*>
238 then the above command will return an error.
240 To perform wildcard expansion, use the C<glob> command.
244 runs C<rm-rf> on each path that matches (ie. potentially running
245 the command many times), equivalent to:
251 C<glob> only works on simple guest paths and not on device names.
253 If you have several parameters, each containing a wildcard, then glob
254 will perform a cartesian product.
258 Any line which starts with a I<#> character is treated as a comment
259 and ignored. The I<#> can optionally be preceeded by whitespace,
260 but B<not> by a command. For example:
266 Blank lines are also ignored.
268 =head1 RUNNING COMMANDS LOCALLY
270 Any line which starts with a I<!> character is treated as a command
271 sent to the local shell (C</bin/sh> or whatever L<system(3)> uses).
275 tgz-out /remote local/remote-data.tar.gz
277 will create a directory C<local> on the host, and then export
278 the contents of C</remote> on the mounted filesystem to
279 C<local/remote-data.tar.gz>. (See C<tgz-out>).
281 =head1 EXIT ON ERROR BEHAVIOUR
283 By default, guestfish will ignore any errors when in interactive mode
284 (ie. taking commands from a human over a tty), and will exit on the
285 first error in non-interactive mode (scripts, commands given on the
288 If you prefix a command with a I<-> character, then that command will
289 not cause guestfish to exit, even if that (one) command returns an
299 Without any parameter, this lists all commands. With a C<cmd>
300 parameter, this displays detailed help for a command.
304 This exits guestfish. You can also use C<^D> key.
306 =head2 alloc | allocate
310 This creates an empty (zeroed) file of the given size, and then adds
311 so it can be further examined.
313 For more advanced image creation, see L<qemu-img(1)> utility.
315 Size can be specified (where C<nn> means a number):
319 =item C<nn> or C<nn>K or C<nn>KB
321 number of kilobytes, eg: C<1440> = standard 3.5in floppy
323 =item C<nn>M or C<nn>MB
327 =item C<nn>G or C<nn>GB
333 number of 512 byte sectors
341 This echos the parameters to the terminal.
343 =head2 edit | vi | emacs
347 This is used to edit a file. It downloads the file, edits it
348 locally using your editor, then uploads the result.
350 The editor is C<$EDITOR>. However if you use the alternate
351 commands C<vi> or C<emacs> you will get those corresponding
354 NOTE: This will not work reliably for large files
355 (> 2 MB) or binary files containing \0 bytes.
361 Change the local directory, ie. the current directory of guestfish
364 Note that C<!cd> won't do what you might expect.
370 Expand wildcards in any paths in the args list, and run C<command>
371 repeatedly on each matching path.
373 See section WILDCARDS AND GLOBBING.
377 =head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
381 =item LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG
383 Set C<LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG=1> to enable verbose messages. This has the
384 same effect as using the B<-v> option.
386 =item LIBGUESTFS_PATH
388 Set the path that guestfish uses to search for kernel and initrd.img.
389 See the discussion of paths in L<guestfs(3)>.
391 =item LIBGUESTFS_QEMU
393 Set the default qemu binary that libguestfs uses. If not set, then
394 the qemu which was found at compile time by the configure script is
397 =item LIBGUESTFS_APPEND
399 Pass additional options to the guest kernel.
403 If compiled with GNU readline support, then the command history
404 is saved in C<$HOME/.guestfish>
408 The C<edit> command uses C<$EDITOR> as the editor. If not
415 guestfish returns I<0> if the commands completed without error, or
416 I<1> if there was an error.
421 L<http://libguestfs.org/>.
425 Richard W.M. Jones (C<rjones at redhat dot com>)
429 Copyright (C) 2009 Red Hat Inc.
430 L<http://libguestfs.org/>
432 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
433 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
434 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
435 (at your option) any later version.
437 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
438 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
439 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
440 GNU General Public License for more details.
442 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
443 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
444 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.